Chapter 14

Rebekah had expected that Abraham’s death, when it came, would change their lives completely, and things were in fact different. They moved back to Lahai-roi, because Rebekah and Isaac both preferred it there—and because it was farther from the cities of the Philistines, where Esau now was being inexorably drawn. With Keturah gone, Rebekah was the undisputed ruler of the women, and because they already knew her, and because Rebekah was a fairer and more patient mistress than Keturah had been, she found no lack of loyalty and help among the women.

But those were all relatively small changes, really. Rebekah had hoped for a more profound change—that without his father’s overwhelming presence, Isaac would become less diffident with the servants, more willing to issue firm commands. But he remained as he always had been, kind and compassionate but prone not to make decisions unless they were of particular urgency. His patience was as inexhaustible as ever—even in cases where firm action could have solved a problem before it got started. It was frustrating that one of Isaac’s finest virtues as a man should be a weakness, at least sometimes, as a ruler.

On the other hand, Rebekah was relieved that contrary to Sarah’s old fears, Ishmael did not make any kind of move against Isaac at all. Ishmael came to Abraham’s burial as he had come for his blessing, with only a small retinue of men. Cousin Moab actually brought more men from his town east of the Jordan. And when Isaac gave Ishmael a gift of a vast number of cattle—which Eliezer had counseled against, lest it be interpreted as tribute—Ishmael responded by giving Isaac a gift of even more sheep, so that neither could be said to have enriched—or intimidated—the other.

As the brothers laid their father’s wrapped body in the cave of Machpelah beside the dried, mummified body of Sarah, Rebekah felt nothing but relief in her heart, for instead of quarreling they embraced each other and wept for their father. Perhaps they wept for different things—Ishmael for the loss of his company when he was a youth and needed him; Isaac for the way Abraham never seemed satisfied with him despite all his effort to be worthy—or perhaps they wept for the same thing, because he was a good man that they loved deeply and whose absence would be keenly felt. Either way, they were at peace with each other there at the tomb Abraham had bought to hold the body of his beloved wife.

And the house of Isaac remained at peace with all his kin, and as for possible enemies outside the family, any who had power enough to be a threat simply had no motive. Abraham had been a man of peace with the strength and will to preserve it. Isaac was no less peaceful, and at first, no one tried to test his will or strength.

Only Rebekah could see that Abraham’s death, rather than liberating Isaac from the burdens that his father had placed upon him, only guaranteed that there would be no relief as long as Isaac lived. That memory of his father choosing to obey God and offer up his life, however he might understand it and even agree with it in his mind, still preyed on him in his heart and showed itself in Isaac’s contempt for his own abilities. Whatever Abraham might have said to him on his deathbed, whatever blessing he might have given, it was not enough to counter all the years of self-doubt, the hopeless self-evaluation that had become a part of Isaac’s character.

The one gift I long most to give him, thought Rebekah, the one that a wife should be able to give, is simply beyond my power. Whatever preys on Isaac’s soul, only God can take from him; whatever happiness he hungers for, only God can give it.

With time, however, changes did come. As the Philistine cities grew, so did their need for farmland to support their growing populations, and soon Philistine farmers were deliberately filling the wells near their cities that Abraham’s herds depended on. It was an act of war, but when Isaac sent complaints to the king of this or that Philistine city, the king always protested that he had never given permission for such a thing, that he deplored it, and that he would surely find and punish the perpetrators.

Isaac, Eliezer, and Rebekah conferred about it, and decided that there was no point in dying or killing over it. “If we had fewer herds,” said Isaac, “we’d have no need of those wells.”

Eliezer’s response was, “If you had no herds at all, we’d need no water except for ourselves.”

He meant it to be a joke, but Isaac didn’t laugh. “I couldn’t feed the men and women who have served my father all these years if I did that. But I’ve found a middle way. I have a loyal servant whose grandsons are now grown men, and it’s wrong to keep him in service to the end of his days. He has earned an inheritance to give to his sons and grandsons, and so I’ll give him all the flocks and herds that are watered at the wells of the Philistines, along with the servants who now tend them. If he’s wise, he’ll move them immediately to other pastures, and avoid quarreling with the Philistines. But since they’ll belong to him, that decision is his as well.”

“That’s nearly half your wealth,” said Eliezer.

“That’s how this servant deserves to be rewarded,” said Isaac. “Though in another sense he will still be lifting half my burden, so even this gift gives back as much to me.”

“And who is the servant who will receive this burdensome gift?”

Rebekah sighed. “Why can’t we just say these things plainly?”

Isaac laughed. “All right, then. Eliezer, you’re the man, of course—who else could it be?”

“You are discharging me from your service?”

“Of course not. I’m finally paying for it.”

“But I bound myself to Abraham forever.”

“Stay bound to Abraham. I’m Isaac, and I declare that you and all your children are free. What I give you now will be your inheritance to pass on to your children. Even if you think you shouldn’t receive so much, remember how little it will be divided among your grandsons.”

“But if I’m not the steward of Isaac, I’m only Eliezer. Who is Eliezer?”

“All your cattle and sheep and goats will low and bleat your name. Soon everyone will know it.”

Eliezer bowed himself to the earth then, and wept, and accepted the gift that Isaac gave him.

After Eliezer left Isaac’s tent, Isaac sat heavily on the rug and said, “It wasn’t about the wells or the Philistines, you know.”

“I should hope not,” said Rebekah. “The right to water is precious and shouldn’t be so easily abandoned.”

“I thought my father should have done this before he died. I even suggested it, but Father said that I’d need all my strength and all my wealth to maintain my position. Which I suppose is true. Father never needed wealth—he could walk into a king’s palace without a single servant, without being armed himself, and still be treated with the respect due to a great lord. While I need to have a few hundred thousand sheep and cows and goats under my control before anyone will take me seriously.”

“You underestimate yourself.”

“You overestimate me,” said Isaac. “But I’m getting older and my vision is beginning to fail. It’s better if I rule over a smaller household. It’s more in line with my abilities.”

“Well, I could rule over a household twice this size,” said Rebekah.

When Isaac looked at her with dismay, she laughed and nudged him. “Isaac, you and I are both very good at ruling a household peacefully. If you were king of the whole earth, there’s not a city that wouldn’t be better governed. But I’m content with half of what your father had, or half of that, or half of that, though you should keep in mind that a vast household will be left alone by enemies the way a snake never bothers to try to swallow a sheep. But if you shrink your holdings small enough, then some ambitious desert snake or city viper will begin to think he can swallow you up and add what you have to his domain.”

“I’ll heed the warning,” said Isaac. “I have no one else to give another half of my wealth to.”

“Until you decide to divide what you have between your sons.”

“The inheritance is whole. It will go to one son, not the other.”

“The birthright is whole,” said Rebekah, “but you know you’ll give half of the flocks and herds and servants to one son as a gift, and the other half to your heir as his inheritance. Call it what you will, it amounts to the same thing. They’ll each get half of the half of your holdings that you now have left.”

“So I leave each of them with a quarter of the strength that my father left to me.” Isaac said it with a note of despair in his voice.

“That’s absurd,” said Rebekah. “The strength of your father was always faith in God, and when he and Sarah were alone in Egypt during the drought, God made them mightier than Pharaoh.”

“Yes, well, that was Father. And Mother.”

“And this is you. All the flocks and herds could be swept away in a moment, and you would still be Isaac.”

“And you would still be Rebekah. But we’d be very very poor.”

They laughed together.

“The wealth is what we give our children who haven’t the faith to rely on God,” said Rebekah.

“The girls will all be like their mother—like stone in their faith,” said Isaac.

“I only worry about Esau,” said Rebekah.

“You don’t need to worry about him,” said Isaac. “His faith is strong.”

Rebekah wondered how he could say that with such confidence. “What sign of faith have you seen in him?”

“He and I speak of the things of God often,” said Isaac.

“Even if Esau really does think of God when he’s talking to you,” said Rebekah, “that still doesn’t account for when he’s out on the hunt with his wild friends or with one of Ishmael’s sons, which is even worse. Do you think he’s thinking of God when he’s out stalking some animal to kill it, or in some town or other, playing at whatever games he plays?”

“Games?” asked Isaac. “What kind of games do you think a young man Esau’s age plays?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been a boy. Not that Esau is a boy anymore. He says he’s going hunting, and he comes back with a smirk on his face and says the deer were elusive today, and I keep thinking it’s no hart he hunts, but hinds.”

Isaac got a distant look on his face. “He knows the law of chastity,” he said. “He assures me that there is no girl whose virtue is in danger from him.”

“Which leaves a vast number of girls whose virtue was ruined long ago,” said Rebekah. “My concern is whether Esau’s virtue is in danger from them.”

“How did we get from our children’s inheritance to Esau’s endless faults?”

“His faults aren’t endless, and I see his virtues as well as you do,” said Rebekah. “I’m proud of him. But what kind of keeper of the birthright will he be, when he takes no thought of the teachings of the prophets except when he needs to do it to impress you?”

“Do you think I’m so easily deceived as that?” asked Isaac.

“Yes, you are,” said Rebekah.

Isaac got the cold look that told Rebekah she was one sentence away from having him leave in silence.

“Isaac, it’s one of your virtues. You’re so absolutely honest yourself that it never crosses your mind that the person you’re talking to might be telling you only what you want to hear.”

“Esau loves the Lord.”

“And I tell you that he doesn’t,” said Rebekah.

“And Jacob does?”

“With all his heart.”

“And you know this because he tells you. How is that any different?”

“Because I don’t know it just from that. I see it in everything he does. Jacob keeps his word, even when it isn’t convenient. Can you say that about Esau?”

“Are you calling him an oath-breaker?”

“I’m saying he doesn’t do what he tells me he’s going to do, and when I remind him he either gets angry with me—‘Mother, I’m going to do it!’—or he laughs and says, ‘Didn’t I already do that?’”

“He’s just irresponsible.”

“All right, that’s as good a word as any.”

“But all boys are. They grow out of it.”

“Jacob isn’t. When he tells me a job will be done, he does it. Carefully and well, and takes pride in having done it for me. When will Esau start to grow out of this . . . irresponsibility?”

Isaac’s eyes flashed. Time for the silence now?

No. Though he didn’t look at her, his voice was hard and set—as angry-sounding as Rebekah could remember his ever being with her. “When will you understand that God’s decision in making Esau the firstborn is an irrevocable one? I’m not going to throw my firstborn out of his place and put his younger brother there, even if Jacob is your favorite child.”

“I love both my sons, and I want what’s best for them.”

“And somehow you decided it’s best for Esau to be rejected as firstborn? How much will he love God then?”

“Can you hear your own words, Isaac? Even you realize that if Esau were deprived of the birthright, his love of God would evaporate at once.”

“If he’s hurt that badly by his parents, in anger he might rebel against God in order to hurt us back.”

“But you were hurt by your father, and you didn’t rebel against God.”

“Rebekah. The birthright is Esau’s. And it’s the great sorrow of my life, that my wife despises her own firstborn.”

The words outraged her with their unfairness, and Rebekah answered quickly, in the first heat of her anger. “The great sorrow of my life is that my husband is blind to the son who loves God and obeys his parents.”

Isaac left her then. As usual, the argument quickly receded and they conversed normally again, but the words stayed in Rebekah’s memory and poisoned everything that happened afterward. There were times when she would have rebuked Esau and charged him to do better, but she held her peace because her husband would think she hated her firstborn. And there were times when she would have delighted in Esau and shown her deep love for him, but in her stubbornness she refused to let her husband see her delight in the young hunter, when Isaac still showed no favor to the son who deserved it more.

As for Jacob, what could she do except try to help him move beyond the deep void in his life that only his father’s love and respect could truly fill?

The wall in the family was fully built, and named, and she and Jacob stayed on one side of it, and Isaac and Esau on the other, even as they went through the motions of being one family, unchanged.

The girls felt it, too. Little Deborah, the eldest of the three, doted on Jacob, who always had time for her even when he was hard at work with the sheep or in the fields. Little Sarah, the second, was devoted to Esau, who always brought her snatches of bright cloth from the city, or a soft rabbit skin from his hunting, or a strange butterfly, or a rare fruit. Only the baby, Qira, did not choose sides—but when Rebekah was upset, Qira would fuss at her breast, as if the milk had soured and Qira could not abide the taste of anger.

With Rebekah fussing at him less, and Isaac favoring him all the more no matter what he did, Esau slipped ever further out of control. Jacob came to her once and told her, “I think Esau has taken a wife in the city of Gerar.”

“It’s not a wife you take when your parents haven’t been told,” said Rebekah, but despite her ironic tone, her heart was sinking at the thought of what it would mean for the birthright, to be in a household headed by an idolatrous woman.

“I heard his friends tease him about having a baby coming.”

“In front of you?”

“Esau was quick to deny it, and his friends saw how angry and worried he was and immediately they denied it. But Mother, even if she’s a Canaanite and not a Philistine, how much better is it to have the holy writings in a house where Asherah is worshiped than in a house that serves Molech?”

“Oh, it’s better,” said Rebekah. “Better in the sense that a quick death in battle is better than a death by torture.”

“I know the birthright isn’t mine,” said Jacob. “But can’t I do anything to protect the holy writings?”

“Have you told your father?”

“What’s the point? He’ll accuse me of being envious and then call Esau in to confront me, and Esau will deny everything and afterward he’ll threaten to kill me if I ever tell lies about him again.”

“Kill you? He threatens your life?”

“He doesn’t mean it,” said Jacob. “I mean, he means it, but he won’t do it.”

“You mean he hasn’t done it, because you haven’t cost him anything. But if you told and your father believed you and took away the birthright, then we’d see what Esau might do.”

“He’s not a killer, Mother.”

“How many times has he come home with blood on his hands?”

“The blood of the beasts he kills and brings home to Father.”

“Like a cat showing off the mice it kills.”

“Father loves the taste of wild game. I understand—I’m tired of the taste of mutton and lentils myself. But someone has to stay home and manage the flocks and herds. Esau has no more interest in the work of the camp than he has in . . .”

“In the birthright.”

“Oh, he’s interested in the birthright, Mother!”

“He’s interested in having it, not in studying the holy writings and living by them.”

“I know Father’s eyes are weak, Mother, but why can’t he see how Esau mocks everything that matters to our family?”

“Because Esau is smart enough not to show that side of himself in front of his father.”

“But what if I had proof?”

“What could possibly prove it to your father? He won’t believe what he’s told, and he can’t see it for himself.”

“I’m the most helpless person in all this, Mother,” said Jacob. “Because if I do anything to show Father who Esau really is, Father thinks I’m envious and want the birthright. Sometimes I think the only way I can help to save the birthright is to renounce it myself.”

“And then whom would it go to?”

“One of Keturah’s boys, maybe. Midian’s a good man, Mother. He’d make a worthy guardian.”

“And then your father’s line would be cut off from the birthright, if it went to his half-brother.”

“If the birthright goes to Esau, the way he is right now, then it will be lost to the whole world, because he’ll never care for it.”

“All we can do,” said Rebekah, “is pray to the Lord to help your brother grow up and grow out of his rebelliousness and repent of his sins and become . . .”

“A good servant to the Lord.”

“Like you.”

“I’m not a good servant to the Lord, Mother, because I’m not the one chosen to be his servant. If I take it upon myself, I’ll be a usurper.”

“You don’t have to have the birthright to be a servant of God,” said Rebekah. “There was never a chance for me to have the birthright, but still I spent my childhood trying to serve God. And finally my day came. As yours will, my son.”

“My day? My day for what—to be at war with my brother?”

“To have your father show you that he sees the man you are.”

“Fathers never see their sons for what they are,” said Jacob.

“That’s not so.”

“You’ve told me yourself how Grandfather never valued Father, either.”

“He never really showed Isaac how he valued him.”

“It’s the same thing.”

“No it’s not,” said Rebekah. “And I didn’t mean your father Isaac, anyway. I meant your Father in heaven.”

“He knows me. He knows us all.”

“Sometimes I wonder why he doesn’t just tell your father the way things should be.”

“Because the problem isn’t that Father can’t see, it’s that he won’t see, and the Lord doesn’t make us do things, he only teaches us and hopes we’ll use the things he taught.”

“So what has God taught you? And how are you going to use it?”

“What are you asking me to do, Mother?”

“Just keep being the man you are, and pray that your brother will realize what road he’s headed down and come back.”

“Or that Father will finally get the proof he needs to see what Esau is becoming. Proof that is witnessed by someone other than me.”

Later, Rebekah would realize that Jacob must have started planning then the incident that finally brought things to a head.

But at the time, the only thing Rebekah worried about was that she shouldn’t have spoken so openly to Jacob about her worries concerning Esau. Yet within the family, Jacob was the only one besides Rebekah who understood the danger from Esau’s behavior. And should she let him feel completely isolated in the family? Wasn’t it good for the obedient son to know that his mother understood the man he had become, even if his father didn’t see it and his brother despised him for it?

I didn’t make Esau’s choices for him. Nor is it my fault Isaac refuses to see. Though it’s unbearable that he doesn’t. Jacob is Isaac as he must have been as a child. He even looks more like Isaac—Esau looks like my father, except for the red hair.

Maybe that’s the problem. Isaac can’t love or value any man who even looks like himself.

For a while Rebekah believed that if Esau felt himself truly needed by the family, he might stop the things he was doing and settle down to life as Isaac’s heir and the future head of the family. So when such a time came, she watched for his response.

It was the climate that changed their lives, as it had been in Abraham’s day. Another drought, so severe that many wells went dry, and others simply didn’t have the water to sustain the flocks. They got word that Eliezer and his sons had sold off much of their stock and then traded the rest to Ezbaal’s cousin in exchange for orchards and wheatfields in the plain near the Great Sea, and they moved into one of the growing towns that was trying to compete with the growing Philistine cities. But Isaac knew that wasn’t the right choice for his household. “If we settle on one piece of land, then we’re bound to one city, to one people, generation after generation. Only when we have the ability to leave and carry what we have with us are we truly free, and only if we’re free can we serve God.”

Esau heard this with an outward show of respect—“That’s very wise, Father”—but Jacob told Rebekah later that Esau and his Canaanite friends later mocked what Father had said.

For days, Isaac tried to decide what to do. If he moved from Lahai-roi and started wandering, he’d find himself struggling to find water that wasn’t already defended. Eventually, a wandering life was bound to mean war. Finally he sat down with Rebekah and told her that as he searched the holy writings, he kept coming back to his father’s account of his journey to Egypt during the depths of the last drought. “There’s always grain in Egypt,” he said.

“But Egypt isn’t the same place where your father went. These days the country is dominated by a strong Pharaoh, and he hasn’t forgotten what happened the last time he allowed wanderers like us into the country.”

“How do you know so much about Egypt?” asked Isaac.

“From you! From the stories you’ve told me out of the holy writings. And from the traders who come through here, of course.”

“Then why is it that I’ve talked to the same traders and I read the same scriptures and they seem to be guiding me to Egypt?”

“It’s not enough to read the holy writings and then try to do what they did. Noah built an ark, after all, but I don’t think that would help us.”

“Noah was commanded to build an ark. We aren’t being commanded to do anything.”

“Are we asking?”

“Of course.”

“No, I mean it, Isaac. Egypt is dangerous, and staying here is impossible, and it’s at times like this that the keeper of the birthright has a right, has the duty to consult the Lord and find out what to do.”

“If the Lord wanted to speak to me, Rebekah, he could have done it a thousand times before now. Including this morning when I prayed to him about exactly this matter.”

“In every crisis before now, your father was head of the household and the Lord spoke to him. Now you’re the patriarch. Expect to be answered, clearly. It’s your right to be led by the Lord.”

“As I recall, you’ve had more actual visions than I have,” said Isaac. “Maybe you should pray.”

“I once received a vision about the babies in my womb,” said Rebekah. “And it was in answer to your prayers. You have responsibility for all these people. The Lord answers you all the time when you pray for them.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“Then it only means that the choice is up to you, and whatever you choose will please the Lord.”

Isaac grinned at her. “Now you’re sounding like the kind of believer you said your mother was—you’ve set a test for the Lord that the Lord can’t fail.”

“But we’re not testing the Lord,” said Rebekah. “We already know that the Lord is God. We’re seeking to know his will. And he will answer.”

“How do you know?”

“Because we need him, and he won’t fail us.”

“No. But I might fail us.”

“The only way you could fail us, Isaac, is if you heard the Lord’s answer and disobeyed it. Or if you refused to ask him, because you didn’t believe he loved us enough to answer.”

So Isaac, full of self-doubt and clinging to his faith in God, went to pray. In the morning he awoke Rebekah by coming into her tent and whispering in her ear. “I dreamed a dream,” he said.

She came out of the fog of sleep to hear him telling of how he saw himself among dying cattle, and dipping down into a well only to come up with jars full of sand. In his dream he said what he had been saying in his prayers—I see nothing for us to do but to go down into Egypt. “And then there was a voice in my dream telling me not to go to Egypt, but to stay in Canaan. The wells our family used to control near the cities of the coast are no longer used, with Eliezer gone. If I go to Abimelech, the king of Gerar, he’ll let us use the wells as long as we need them.”

“Let us use them? They’re ours by right. Your father dug them!”

“Let him think he rules, let him think the wells are his to share with us,” said Isaac. “I have the Lord’s promise—the same one he gave to Father, only now he has sworn to fulfill the oath with me. My children will multiply as the stars of heaven, he said, and they’ll be given all these countries, and through my seed all nations of the earth will be blessed.”

Then Isaac wept in her embrace, in gratitude that the Lord at last had spoken to him, as he spoke to Abraham, and accepted him as the heir to Abraham’s covenant. “You believed when I did not.”

“You always believed in God,” said Rebekah. “It’s yourself you doubted, and I knew better, because I can see you.”

“And I can’t see anything,” said Isaac ruefully, for his eyes were getting old and he couldn’t see far-off things clearly. Worse, there were white patches in his eyes growing out over the pupils, cutting off part of his field of vision. But for now, he could see what he needed to—that the Lord had not abandoned him, but would lead him to safety.

Only Esau resisted the move. “I can’t hunt there in the plains,” he said. “It’s all farmland, orchards, tame.”

“You can hunt where you’ve always hunted,” said Isaac. “You’ll just have to go farther and work harder to get there.”

“You might try staying with the camp and helping us redig the wells near Gerar,” said Jacob.

“I’m not a well-digger,” said Esau contemptuously.

“We’ll all be well-diggers,” said Isaac, “until our flocks have the water they need.”

“Of course, Father. I was only teasing Jacob. As if he needed to teach me my duty!”

They went to the wells near Gerar and it all happened as the Lord had promised. It wasn’t exactly a miracle—the Lord didn’t force Abimelech to be generous where his father had been haughty back when Isaac first gave up the wells. What Rebekah gathered from the ladies of Gerar whom she visited with while Isaac negotiated with the king was that the crown rested very loosely on the head of this current Abimelech, whose mother had been only a concubine and whose people had actually preferred a different brother who had happened to be away from Gerar when the old king suddenly died. Having Isaac’s large camp and hundreds of servants in the hills overlooking the city changed the balance of power in the city, for Abimelech made a great show of his friendship with Isaac, implying that if anyone attempted to revolt against him, he’d be able to flee to the camp of his friend Isaac and bring down an army of Hebrews to subdue Gerar and restore Abimelech to power.

But the Lord had known the weakness of Abimelech’s position, and that’s why he sent Isaac there. The miracle was not that Abimelech exploited their presence and in exchange Isaac got water for his flocks during a drought. The miracle was that Isaac asked the Lord with faith that he would be answered—or at least with hope—and the Lord answered him, and for the first time in his life Isaac was happy in the confidence of the Lord.

Esau, true to form, lasted only one day at well-digging, and then he was off with Nebajoth, one of Ishmael’s sons, on a hunting expedition into the rocky country south of Gerar. “We have meat,” said Rebekah. “We have enough meat to feed ten thousand. What we need is water. Will you find us water in the desert and bring it home to us on the backs of asses?”

“Father likes the venison I bring him,” said Esau. “He’s an old man. Don’t you think an old man should have things he likes?”

“He needs your help more than he needs venison.”

“He has servants,” said Esau. “But he has no deer in all his flocks and herds.” Then Esau laughed and went on his way.

Jacob saw it all, of course, and when Esau was gone said to his mother, “He thinks it’ll be like hunting in the hills near Kirjath-arba.”

“And it won’t be?” asked Rebekah.

“There are streams and pools in the mountains of Canaan. But south in the Negev there are no streams.”

“Why do you know this and he doesn’t?” asked Rebekah.

“Because I know everything the shepherds know, and the shepherds know that they can’t take a flock into the Negev and hope to bring back even half of them. The lions know where there are tiny shaded pools they can lap from, and so do the small deer and mountain goats they prey on. So there are always lions to take the sheep that don’t die of thirst.”

“Is your brother in danger?”

“In danger of coming home exhausted and empty-handed.”

“Of dying? Is it that bad?”

“Mother, Esau’s a good hunter. He’ll have the water he needs with him, and when he sees that he’s running low, he’ll come home. As for the lions—Esau will no doubt bring home a lion skin to show off. Even if he finds no deer, he’ll not come home without blood on his hands.”

“What about you?” asked Rebekah, suddenly curious.

“What about me?”

“Could you kill a lion?”

“I have killed lions, Mother. I’m a shepherd, and it’s a season of drought. The lions come down out of the mountains, following the game, and they’re following the water.”

“But you never bring home the skin. I never hear of your doing such things.”

“It would shame me in front of the other shepherds, to be caught bragging to my father and mother about doing what every shepherd does.”

“The other shepherds brag all the time.”

“They’re not the son of the patriarch,” said Jacob.

As long as she was asking, she might as well learn the rest. “What about in battle?”

“Against what foe?”

“The enemies we sometimes face. Raiders. Soldiers.”

“I don’t know. I’ve never fought against a man.”

“Oh.”

“Why are you asking such questions, Mother? Is there something you know about, that you haven’t told me? Is there a war coming?”

“No, I don’t—I hope not. I just wondered—because you’ve killed lions and I didn’t know it . . .”

“I’m no match for Esau when it comes to fighting, Mother. He loves it and he’s been practicing all his life. I hate it and I’ve learned only what I need to in order to fend off raiders and thieves. They aren’t usually the best fighters anyway so they’re easily frightened away. That’s the total of my experience of battle—frightening away marauders by showing them that we won’t run away ourselves at the sight of them.”

Something sank inside Rebekah’s heart. Because she could not forget that Esau had once threatened to kill Jacob, and even though he almost certainly didn’t mean it, it would have been nice to think that Jacob could protect himself.

Though in truth, no one was safe if someone wanted to murder him and didn’t care about the consequences. Unless the Lord was protecting you, and then no enemy could touch you. Jacob’s protection would never be sword or spear in his hand, but rather faith and goodness in his heart.

And in faith and goodness, he was as skilled and practiced as Esau was with bow and javelin.

Esau came home empty-handed, as Jacob had foretold, and he and Nebajoth and the men they had taken with them were all exhausted and famished. Jacob had seen to it that plenty of lentil pottage was kept ready for them, so that whenever they returned they could eat without waiting. They were so hungry they ate it all—though apparently it never occurred to Esau to thank Jacob for having provided for him. Rather he took it as his right to be served by his younger brother.

During their time in Gerar, true disaster struck. The blotches in Isaac’s eyes finally grew to block his pupils entirely. He was utterly blind.

Rebekah came to find him on one of his last days with vision, and found him in his tent, bowed over a parchment, weeping.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I can’t remember what it says.”

“What do you mean?”

“I could always make out enough of the writing to remember the words and say them aloud, but I can’t even tell which prophet’s story this is.”

Rebekah glanced down at the parchment. It was the first time she had been allowed to read one of the holy writings for herself—and she hadn’t actually been allowed this time, either. Yet she felt no excitement about it, because everything was swallowed up in Isaac’s grief at his blindness. “At the head of the parchment,” Rebekah said, “it says that it’s the book of Enoch, written in his own hand as a testament to and condemnation of the people who for their love of bloodshed have rejected the Lord their God.”

Isaac sat in silence.

Was he angry that she had read from the scripture? “Do you need me to read more?”

He shook his head.

She reached out and took his hand, meaning to comfort him. Instead, he wept again.

She saw how old he had become. His hair was white, his beard speckled like new-broken granite. And with the white splotches on his eyes, he seemed to have lost much of the fire that she had always seen burning in him.

He was going to die.

Not tomorrow or the next day, but his body was aging faster than his father’s had. And with his vision gone, as it nearly was, he would lose much of his hope, much of his reason to live.

She thought of her father then, and how he had raged when he lost his hearing. But his deafness had been caused by an accident and a sickness that followed it. It came on him suddenly, in the robustness of his middle age—and even he had lost much of his vigor because of it, until Laban and Rebekah had restored it to him with their efforts to write to him, to be his ears.

“Isaac, you won’t have to go without reading the holy writings. Let me and Jacob and Esau read them to you.”

“It’s too late,” said Isaac. “I always thought I had more time.”

“More time for what?”

“For copying,” he said. “Father didn’t let me have them during his old age—I think he was more and more afraid that I might lose one or damage it. And after I got them, I copied a few but I knew I’d have plenty of time after my sons took over the work of the camp.”

“So let your sons do the work of copying. It’s their work eventually.” Well, it was Esau’s work, but she knew which son actually had the patience to do it. As for that, why not make the most audacious offer? “I can help. My hand is as clear and clean as this.”

If he even heard her, he gave no sign.

“I’ll never see the words again.”

“Neither will your father. The advantage you have is that you’re not dead, so at least you’ll hear the words as we read them to you.”

“Yes,” said Isaac. “Yes, I see the wisdom of that.” He stilled his weeping. “I’m sorry you saw me being so weak. Grieving for my eyes like a child who lost a toy.”

“I saw my father’s grief when he lost his hearing. Losing your vision is harder. Of course you grieve.”

“It wasn’t for my eyes, Rebekah, truly it wasn’t. I give thanks that I ever had them. I grieved because . . . just when the Lord gave me vision in the spirit for the first time, he’s taken away the vision of my eyes. What have I done to be so unworthy?”

“This isn’t a punishment,” said Rebekah. “It’s . . . part of life. These things happen to people. You’re not the first blind man, or we wouldn’t already have a word for it, would we?”

“I know,” he said. “And yes, Rebekah, the work of copying must be done. If the Lord makes me blind, then my sons have to be my eyes and hands. And if the Lord has given me a wife who can read and write, I would be ungrateful not to let you be my helpmeet in this as in all other things.”

He had heard her offer, had thought about it, and without Abraham here to be adamant, he could see that the old rule was not helpful now, and change it.

He reached out and touched her face. “There’s one gift in my blindness, though. You’ll always be as beautiful in my eyes as you are today.”

“You’re so silly, Isaac. My beauty fled years ago, such as it was. I’m an old woman. Though of course I’m still but a child compared to you.”

He laughed. “Ah, but you’ve stayed beautiful. In fact, you’ve grown more beautiful with every day and year that’s passed. Even when we argue, you know, I still marvel that the Lord loved me enough to give you to me as my wife.”

“Oh, come now. You just didn’t know it, but I was the first of the plagues the Lord sent to you, blindness being by far the lesser one.”

He kissed her, and then let his lips explore her cheeks, her eyes, her brow. “I can depend on you,” he said.

“For everything.”

“You’ll be my eyes. Whatever you see, you’ll tell me.”

“I will.”

“I’ll always see truly, with you as my eyes.”

“As truly as I see. I can’t be any wiser for you than I am for myself.”

“That’s vision enough for me,” said Isaac.

“And you have the Lord to speak truth into your heart.”

“Yes. I do.”

Thus began the precious months in which Jacob and Rebekah copied the scriptures, reading aloud to Isaac as they did. He would interrupt them and explain what Abraham had told them this or that passage meant, and when they copied it out, they would add Isaac’s explanations and read them back to him. They would sometimes interrupt with questions, and Jacob often discussed doctrine with his father while Rebekah kept on writing.

It was wonderful to see Jacob and Isaac sharing the holy writings this way. To hear how Jacob’s voice was the same as Isaac’s, how his tone echoed his father’s inflections. And gradually Jacob began adding his own insights and speculations about the implications of the scriptures, as Isaac nodded encouragement or offered countersuggestions.

Through all of this, Esau came once or twice, early on, but he quickly lost patience and left, and then stopped coming in the first place. Rebekah never bothered to point out Esau’s absence to Isaac. Why provoke a quarrel, when the point was so obvious that even a blind man could see it? Especially a blind man.

But if Isaac saw, he gave no sign.

Meanwhile, Isaac’s people had prospered so much in the land near Gerar that he needed more servants to tend his flocks and fields and orchards, until he had as many servants as he had had before he sent half of them with Eliezer. The people of Gerar began to be envious, and then frightened. “How do we know they won’t decide they want to possess our city?” they said, and there began to be quarrels between men of Gerar and Isaac’s men over the use of the wells. Of course Abimelech denied any knowledge of what his citizens were doing, and of course Isaac and Rebekah pretended to believe his protestations. But they understood that Abimelech did not dare to stop his people from what they were doing, or he would be accused of already being under Isaac’s control, and one of his many rivals would rally support against him.

Since Abimelech was helpless to stop the fighting, Isaac’s answer was to send his men to dig another well farther from the city, and even as they were digging it, men of Gerar came to harass them, claiming that any water that came out of it should belong to them because it was on land within sight of the walls of Gerar. Isaac named the well Esek, meaning “strife,” and they used it for a few months, till a new well even farther away could be dug, at Sitnah.

But even that one became a point of contention, until Isaac had his men dig yet another well in poorer land that was so far from Gerar that it would take half a day for the men of Gerar to reach them to cause trouble. And at this well, Rehoboth, there was no more contention.

But of course it did not have as much water in it as the previous wells had had, and they needed yet another. Isaac rode a camel that was led in front of the others, following a winding path among hills pocked with outcroppings of rock and covered with sun-browned grass. Finally Isaac told the boy leading him to stop. The spot seemed to Rebekah to be no more inviting than any other, but Isaac said, “Tomorrow we’ll begin to dig here.”

Such was their respect for him that none of the servants said, This is just the sort of place a blind man would choose. But they had to be thinking it.

That night, sleeping in the same traveling tent with Isaac, Rebekah awoke to hear him mumbling in his sleep. It seemed not to be a nightmare, and so she did not waken him, but lay there and listened. The words surfaced in isolation and meant nothing to her. Finally he grew still, and she realized from the way he was breathing that he was no longer asleep.

“What was your dream?” she asked him.

“The Lord came to me,” said Isaac.

She became more alert, and leaned over him. In the darkness she saw nothing, yet his voice told her that he was filled with emotion. She glided her hand along his chest to his neck, then up to his cheeks. Sure enough, tears had flowed from his eyes across his temples and into his beard.

“What did he say?” asked Rebekah.

“He said he was the God of my father, and told me not to be afraid, because he’s with me. He said he would bless me and multiply my seed for Abraham’s sake, because he was such a good servant.”

Rebekah knew that even in the midst of this vision, Isaac would hear only that it was Abraham’s worthiness, not his own, that the Lord was honoring.

“Tomorrow we’ll write the Lord’s words,” said Rebekah. “I’ll be your hand, and we’ll write an account of your vision in the book of Isaac.”

“There is no book of Isaac,” he said.

“Didn’t you write about the Lord telling you to go to Gerar instead of Egypt?”

“It didn’t seem important. Not like the visions my father had.”

“If the Lord thinks it’s important enough to speak to you, how can you say that it isn’t important enough to write it down?”

“I can’t write anything. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m blind.”

“But you have my hands, or Jacob’s hands, if you think it has to be a man. You’ve had the vision you wanted all your life, and you have to write it down so your children and their children will know of it.”

“If the Lord wanted me to write, he wouldn’t have made me blind.”

“If the Lord wanted you not to write, he would have taken you home. He hasn’t, so you’re still here, and as long as you’re here, you’re the only one who can write, or cause your words to be written down by another. Your words, Isaac. That’s what matters, not whose hand makes the actual letters on the parchment.”

He was silent for a moment. “You’ll write faithfully the words I say.”

“Of course.”

“But I don’t know how to say it.”

“Just tell what happened. Tell what the Lord said. You don’t have to write eloquently. You’re not giving a speech to an army, urging them to battle. You’re telling what the Lord did. Tonight in your sleep he came and spoke to you. That’s all you have to say.”

“To you it’s easy, because the responsibility isn’t yours. There won’t be copyists year after year, writing down the same ill-sorted words and thinking, ‘Isaac—his writing is nothing like his father’s.’”

“They won’t think such a foolish thing, and even if they did, would you let pride or shame stop you from writing? What do you care what they think of you, as long as they know of what the Lord has said and done?”

“I don’t care. I mean, I’d never let that stop me. But it’s all right for me to hate the fact that I’m no good at this.”

“The Lord will make you as good a speaker as you need to be, as long as you have the faith to speak in his name.”

“As good as I need to be,” said Isaac. “But never as good as I want to be. I’m ashamed that the Lord always has to make do with me. I’m an ordinary man who keeps the records between the great prophets, a place holder.”

“Place holders aren’t visited in the night by the Lord.”

“He visited me for my father’s sake.”

“But he didn’t visit Ishmael or any of the sons of Keturah, and they have the same father.”

“Enough,” said Isaac. “You’ve comforted me, now go back to sleep.”

What Rebekah didn’t understand was why a man who had just received a vision from God should even need comforting. But to Isaac, the vision only left him feeling more keenly aware of his unworthiness.

Perhaps that was why the Lord did not come to him more. Out of mercy, because it made him so miserable.

It was on the third day of working on the new well that Abimelech himself came out to them with a party of soldiers, bringing gifts to show that he wanted nothing but friendship to prevail between the people of Isaac and the citizens of Gerar.

Rebekah wanted to say something brutally honest about what friendship with Abimelech was worth, but of course she said nothing, merely listening as Isaac spoke to Abimelech as if they were good friends. Isaac had Jacob give Abimelech gifts of twice the value, and sent him on his way with firm assurances of what mattered most to Abimelech—that Isaac wasn’t angry and wouldn’t seek vengeance against him or his city, even though the orchards and fields Isaac had planted were now in the possession of the people of Gerar.

“Poor Abimelech,” said Rebekah after he was gone. “He doesn’t understand that fields that produced a hundredfold for the servant of God will be ordinary soil for the servants of Molech.”

By the time Abimelech was gone, it was nearly time to stop work on well-digging for the day, and Jacob had gone to tell the men that, when he suddenly returned at a run. “Water!” he cried. “They’ve struck water!”

“Impossible,” said Isaac. “They haven’t dug deep enough yet.”

“It’s close to the surface here,” said Jacob. “There’ll be plenty of water.”

“Then this is where we’ll stay,” said Isaac. “Call the place the Well of Shebah. Beersheba. This is our camping place now.”

“Who can doubt that the Lord loves the house of Isaac?” said Rebekah.

“No one doubts it,” said Isaac. “And may they never doubt that the house of Isaac loves the Lord.”

Then he had her lead him to where the workmen were celebrating, so he could commend them and then give a prayer of thanks and a burnt offering to the Lord for having blessed them yet one more time.